Not only insulated from the flood control scandal, Marcos now also controls Congress
PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s public relations machine had shifted into overdrive, claiming to have “spectacularly” insulated their boss from the tsunami of corruption revelations now engulfing the government’s flood control program. But the evidence points to Marcos and Malacañang — a fact that even the slickest PR maneuvers can’t erase.
Worse, the whitewash is hiding from the public a more terrible development for the Republic: Marcos shortly after assuming power in 2022 has tightly controlled the House of Representatives through his cousin Speaker Martin Romualdez, using a billion pesos to bribe the representatives into subservience. On Tuesday, he put the Senate under his thumb, putting a longtime Marcos loyalist, Sen. Vicente Sotto III, to head the body. Marcos is quietly installing a one-man rule.
But the evidence points to Marcos — a fact that even the slickest PR maneuvers can’t erase. It is an inarguable fact that the nonexistent and unfinished flood control projects, estimated to cost at least P200 billion in pocketed taxpayers’ money, were all initiated and undertaken when Marcos became president starting July 2022. It was Marcos who had handpicked Manuel Bonoan to head the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which had sole authority over the flood control projects.
Marcos was therefore criminally negligent for being clueless about this massive corruption, or worse, complicit in it. Yet his PR people have portrayed him now as a crusader determined to go after the criminals in this huge scam.
In fact, Marcos even bragged in July 2024 in his State of the Nation Address that his administration had undertaken 5,500 flood control projects.
The gods got mad, it seems, and intervened — through widespread floods — to reveal to all and sundry that many of these projects are only on paper, either never started or mostly unfinished, with the budget allocated for these siphoned off to criminal DPWH officials and contractors.
Either Marcos was stunned by the consequences of his negligence or panicked that the nation would condemn him as complicit in one of the country’s worst crimes to have made Filipinos live a hell on water.
Bonoan
Sources claimed that Marcos, when the floods hit in August 2024, asked his DPWH secretary for an explanation as the 5,500 projects Bonoan reported to him obviously failed. Bonoan told him that the rains because of “climate change” were more than the normal and came at a shorter period of time. He also claimed that the reports of ghost flood control projects were exceptional cases and was being “taken care of” quietly.
However, Marcos was also told early this year that if rains and typhoons hit the country as often and as bad as in 2024, there would be such public outrage as worse as when three typhoons hit the country in 1972, and when the Super Typhoon Haiyan killed 6,300 in Leyte in 2012.
For some reason though, Marcos still dragged his feet, and didn’t order an investigation at that time. Was he told that the province with the fourth-biggest flood control projects costing P50 billion was Leyte, where a district his cousin, the House Speaker Martin Romualdez, was the representative of, and that the biggest contractor there was Sunwest, owned by former party-list congressman Zaldy Co, known as the speaker’s closest confidante, especially in the crafting of the national budget?
Both have been whispered about as having perfected the template for siphoning off flood control budgets, with Leyte — Romualdez’s stronghold — often cited as the testing ground where the scheme was first honed before being exported nationwide. If true, this means the rot was not incidental but deliberate, designed at the very heart of Marcos’ political family.
“If anyone should be investigated, the first person to be investigated is House Speaker Martin Romualdez,” said Kiko Barzaga, the 26-year-old representative of the fourth district of Cavite, home province of Marcos’ two key Cabinet secretaries.
Godfather
Was Marcos perhaps told that his cousin is viewed by many in Congress as the godfather of flood control projects, whom he can rely on to keep the scam all over the country below radar? Was he told that the kickbacks from the flood control projects were used to bribe the 215 congressmen to file the impeachment case against the vice president?
Marcos was alerted though that politicians identified with the Duterte camp had been investigating the Discaya group of contractors, tipped by Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto, who gave them copies of the TV feature on the couple’s billionaire lifestyle with their 28 luxury cars by Julius Babao in September 2024 and — separately — by Korina Sanchez on Nov. 24, 2024.
Apparently, Sotto wanted to expose the Discayas as corrupt contractors, which allegedly explains their vast wealth. Mrs. Sarah Discaya ran against him in the Pasig mayoralty race in May 2025. Even as Sotto won by a landslide, he was hurt by the Discayas’ allegations that Sotto’s pet project, the building of a new P3-billion city hall, had involved kickbacks.
Sources claimed that the Discayas committed to cooperate with Sen. Rodante Marcoleta a week before he was assured that he would be appointed chairman of the Blue Ribbon Committee, as he indeed was on July 29.
Panicked
After being told of this development, Marcos panicked and worried that the articulate Marcoleta would use the exposé to claim that his administration was hiding a horrific crime that resulted in the massive floods in June and July.
Marcos asked his table of PR practitioners, funded by a slush fund raised from a government regulatory agency, to come out with a plan to counter Marcoleta’s exposé. Marcos launched this plan in a press conference on Aug. 11. This involved the following:
Accuse contractors in general of flood control anomalies, release a list of 15 biggest contractors, regardless of whether they were innocent or not, post this list as well as details of the DPWH’s 2,500 flood control projects, but not their owners, and appeal to citizens’ groups to provide government info on ghost and substandard flood control projects. Become teary-eyed in anger over the racketeers before the cameras, even if you would be the first Philippine president to ever do so.
Marcos’ PR spin is actually from the worn-out playbook used by not a few heads of state to recover from a fiasco, which at its core involves the injunction: “Embrace the bad news. Admit the failure in some way rather than denying it, and if you can, blame it on something or someone or something else.”
Lying
Marcos has been lying through his teeth: “I was about to stop it, and I was just gathering info. I’m so angry that I cried in front of a female broadcaster, aghast how could such people be so cruel, undertake such crimes. Now help me get the info needed to stop these and prosecute the criminals.”
Marcos’ cousin, Babe Romualdez, a brilliant publicist who happens to be our undeniably Amboy ambassador to the United States, in his Philippine Star column on Aug. 24 set the PR line with its title “PBBM’s fight against corruption: He cannot do it alone.” His partner in the industry in the same newspaper followed up the dissemination of the line two days later in his column: “The President has shown his mettle to do a major house cleaning in his governance, tackle corruption.”
Malacañang, however, felt the political ground shake when the Discayas in the Sept. 8 Blue Ribbon Committee hearing read their sworn testimony which claimed that 21 congressmen and a presidential assistant received kickbacks from the flood control projects. The Discayas alleged that they were told by the congressmen that Speaker Martin Romualdez and his confidante party-list representative Co got a part of the billions of pesos in kickbacks.
Marcos panicked, fearing he himself could be implicated by the Discayas. The next day, Sen. Vicente Sotto III — who inadvertently (or maybe advertently) said in the hearing that he had talked to Marcos the previous night — led 14 other senators to remove Sen. Francis Escudero as Senate president and had himself installed to lead the body.
Guilt
Marcos may have inadvertently revealed his guilt: After just two days of hearings on the flood control corruption by the Blue Ribbon Committee led by Marcoleta, a senator of proven integrity and capability, he revamped the Senate leadership, just to take Marcoleta out.
And who replaced Marcoleta? Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who two days before Marcoleta’s removal posted in his Facebook page, a “message to Marcos,” accompanied by a photo of the President wiping away his tears, as he condemned the flood control profiteers in an interview. Lacson’s message: “We feel you, Mr President. We have your back.”
I guess we know now that Lacson won’t lift a finger to investigate Marcos for the horrific flood control corruption. Marcos has snatched victory from what would have been the ashes of his defeat. We’re no longer a Republic but a one-man rule. Ironically, the self-styled carriers of the spirit of Cory Aquino, the saint of democracy, helped the son of the dictator. So did the children of billionaires, as well as two who came from the media which is purportedly a bastion of democracy.
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
X: @bobitiglao
Archives: www.rigobertotiglao.com
Book orders: www.rigobertotiglao.com/shop
The post Not only insulated from the flood control scandal, Marcos now also controls Congress first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.
Not only insulated from the flood control scandal, Marcos now also controls Congress
Source: Breaking News PH
No comments: